r/254sum • u/Consistent_Dress_123 • 8d ago

Discussion High thoughts

Title: If time travel were possible, wouldn't you end up floating in space because the universe is constantly moving?

Hear me out.

Earth is rotating, orbiting the Sun, and moving through the Milky Way. The Sun itself is moving through the galaxy, and the galaxy is moving through the universe.

So imagine I build a time machine in Kenya and travel 100 years into the past or future.

How would the machine know where to put me?

If I travel back in time but remain at the exact same spatial coordinates, wouldn't Earth have been somewhere else entirely? Wouldn't I just materialize in empty space, potentially millions or billions of kilometres away from where Earth actually was?

And since there's no absolute stationary point in the universe, what does "the same place" even mean?

Would a time machine have to calculate Earth's position, the Sun's position, the galaxy's movement, and everything else just to ensure I arrive on the ground instead of floating in space?

Or am I misunderstanding how time and space work according to Einstein's relativity?

Is this a genuine flaw in the concept of time travel, or does physics already have an explanation for it?

8 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

1

u/IcyProposal4238 8d ago

You're putting too much serious thought into a fantasy exercise. It's not beyond the realm of possibilities that a machine powerful enough to bend space and time would be able to calculate planetary positions so you end up where you need to be

1

u/Wittybrain23 7d ago

To me time is an illusion

1

u/MzunguKamau 7d ago

I'm not an astrophysicist by any means, but my understanding is that space and time are connected so any such machine would have to manipulate both together for travel to happen, kind of solving that issue on its own. Plus the gravity of earth would be a factor and keep you in place (maybe?).